Sunday, January 10, 2016

by Logan Martinez, Outreach Coordinator, National Jobs for All Coalition

The Town Hall Meetings in Dayton and Columbus featuring Rep. John Conyers went extremely well with good turnouts in both cities. The speeches were informative and the dialogue during questions and answers was positive and highlighted the economic hardship and inequality facing the American people both locally and nationally. The Town Hall meetings succeeded in raising the prominence of the need for jobs, health care, raising the minimum wage, and other key issues.

As principal organizer of these events, NJFAC Outreach Coordinator Logan Martinez thanks everyone involved in both Town Hall meetings; the volunteers who put many hours of time in organizing and publicizing, the great co-sponsors in Dayton and Columbus, the financial supporters who made it possible, and the great speakers and panelists.
And thanks to Rep. John Conyers for his continuing leadership in the fight for jobs, health care, and a better America.
NJFAC looks forward to building an ongoing network for jobs, health care and social justice in Ohio and to mounting comparable Town Meetings around the nation.
For more information, visit the National Jobs for All Coalition web site, www.NJFAC.org or contact Logan Martinez, Outreach Coordinator, loganmartinez2u [at] yahoo.com

Dayton Program

Welcome and Opening Remarks, Rev. Robert E. Jones

Jeff Mims, Dayton City Commissioner

Mayor Nan Whaley and the Dayton City Commission have declared Saturday December 5, 2015 John Conyers Day in Dayton.

Moderator, Debbie Silverstein, SPAN Ohio State Director

Keynote, U.S. Congressman John Conyers Jr.

Panel:

Charles Morton, Executive Secretary, Dayton-Miami Valley AFL-CIO

Phillip Harvey, Professor of Law and Economics, Rutgers School of Law

Morris Brown, MD, Family Practitioner, Single Payer Health Care

Acknowledgements, Derrick Forward, President NAACP

Closing Remarks, John T. Donnellan, President &CEO Community Action Partnership

Thursday, November 19, 2015

U.S. Congressman John Conyers is coming to Ohio in conjunction with the Jobs for All National 2015/16 Tour. The Town Hall meetings will feature testimony on the impact of long-term unemployment and poverty on the Dayton community. There will be presentations on job creation, health care, raising the minimum wage, and other important issues. The primary goal is to elevate the jobs issue to national prominence.

Rep. Conyers is the Dean of the U.S. Congress, and the first African American to serve in this capacity. He represents the Detroit, Michigan area and has been a strong voice for progressive ideas including job creation with his introduction of HR 1000 and healthcare with HR 676. He is also co-chair of the Full Employment Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A new local coalition of jobs advocates, unions and clergy members will host a congressman from Detroit who is the sponsor of bills to create jobs and provide universal health care.

The group will hold a town-hall meeting with U.S. Rep John Conyers on Dec. 4 at Trinity Baptist Church on the Near East Side as part of a National Jobs for All Coalition tour. The event will include testimony on long-term unemployment and a discussion panel.

Among the group’s goals is raising awareness about unemployment and under-employment among African-Americans, Hispanics and youth in Columbus, said the Rev. Joel King, vice president of the Ohio Interdenominational Ministers Alliance, which represents about 60 clergy members.

Beyond that, he said, he hopes residents will be encouraged to get involved in the issue, by asking elected officials to support Conyers’ bills.

“We feel like millions of people are being left behind in the American dream,” said Logan Martinez, Jobs for All outreach coordinator.

“They’re working extremely hard and unable to make ends meet or working hard and there are holes in the safety net.

“There’s great disparity in what we pretend to say people can do here and what people can actually do.”

Conyers’ jobs bill, introduced by the Democrat in February, would create a tax on certain financial transactions, to fund workforce-investment programs and to make job-creation grants to states, local governments, schools, nonprofit organizations and Indian tribes. It is referred to as the Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act.

The health-care bill, referred to as the Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act, also was introduced in February and would establish a single-payer health-care system to provide free necessary health care to everyone living in the United States.

Both bills had died in previous congressional sessions before being reintroduced this year.

The U.S. unemployment level of 5 percent represents nearly 8 million Americans. On top of that, millions more work only part time or have given up looking for jobs, Martinez said.

In Columbus, pockets of the city suffer significantly higher unemployment. According to 2009-2013 Census Bureau data analyzed by the nonprofit Community Research Partners, that was true in 17 of the city’s 28 ZIP codes, with Franklinton at the top with a 29 percent unemployment rate. The poverty rate is at least 26 percent in 15 of the city’s ZIP codes, with Weinland Park at the top with a poverty rate of nearly 60 percent.

About a dozen groups have signed on to support the town-hall event, Martinez said.

Among them is Jobs for Columbus, an initiative aimed at increasing the city income tax to provide local transitional jobs.

The proposal would increase the city income tax by half a percentage point, in an attempt to raise $120 million annually dedicated to job training and creation, said Elicia Finnell, founder of the initiative.

She said the money would pay minimum wage for thousands of Columbus residents hired by participating businesses and other locations. In return, employers would provide job experience and training in marketable skills.

“It would be sort of a job safety net, that anyone who needed immediate employment could get one of these jobs — sort of a survival job,” Finnell said.

The program, she said, could help the homeless, the chronically unemployed, people with criminal records, unemployed youth and unemployed men with child-support obligations.

A goal is to place the initiative before voters in November 2016, Finnell said, but efforts are in the early stages. The campaign is creating a petition that it hopes to circulate to gain the signatures needed to get a shot at the ballot.

Eighty years ago, on August 14, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, famously declaring: "If the Senate and House of Representatives had done nothing more... than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time." Nonetheless, Roosevelt acknowledged that this groundbreaking Act was "a cornerstone in a structure... by no means complete."

Initially, the Social Security structure was indeed incomplete. Only a portion of the workforce was covered by the retirement and unemployment insurance programs. Left out were employees in very small establishments and the public sector as well as self-employed workers. Also excluded were domestic workers -- largely women, and agricultural laborers, an occupation employing the vast majority of African Americans.

Since FDR laid the cornerstone, Old Age Insurance has expanded almost beyond recognition. Within four years it began covering widows and orphans, transforming Social Security into a family program. In 1950, Congress added coverage for domestic and agricultural laborers. An additional, grave risk -- disability -- was added later in the fifties, and Medicare, in the mid-1960s. In 1972, automatic cost-of-living increases began protecting retirement benefits against the risk of inflation.

Retirement benefits have increased in adequacy but are often too low, particularly for one-third of seniors whose principal income is social security -- a proportion increasing with the decline in private pensions.

Unemployment Insurance has been less expandable, but excluded groups were covered in 1970 when Congress also enacted automatic extension of weeks of coverage during recessions. While Old Age and Survivors' Insurance is almost universal, most jobless workers are still not eligible for Unemployment Insurance in ordinary times, although the proportion increases during recessions when so many more people are laid off.

But what is social security without a job?

That was the keystone, according to the report of the Cabinet-level Committee on Economic Security that planned the Social Security Act: "Since most people must live by work, the first objective in a program of economic security must be maximum employment." Headed by the first female Cabinet member, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, the Committee proposed "employment assurance" -- "that the federal government should stimulate private employment and provide employment for those able-bodied workers whom industry cannot employ." They observed that public-work programs are most necessary in periods of severe depression, but may also be needed in normal times.

Except for short-term unemployment, both Roosevelt and Federal Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins, preferred work to cash benefits. They considered a permanent government employment program for those still jobless after receiving short-term unemployment compensation, but the two elements were split into permanent but short Unemployment Insurance (only 16 weeks originally), and a temporary employment program, the famous Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA literally changed the face of this nation, vastly enriching our physical, social, and cultural resources, but it was terminated during World War II when full employment made such job creation temporarily unnecessary.

Thus, as Perkins wrote in the mid-1940s, "Unemployment Insurance stands alone as the only protection for people out of work."

What would Roosevelt, Hopkins, and Perkins have said when, during the Great Recession, many jobless workers collected extended unemployment benefits instead of being paid for work that would have benefitted not only them but all of us -- by repairing our decaying infrastructure, making our economy and the planet more sustainable, and providing sorely needed services.

Unemployment continues to undermine economic security and is neither short-term nor confined to deep economic downturns. Today, six years after the official end of the Great Recession, 20 million people are either jobless or forced to work part-time. The labor-force participation rate or proportion of working-age people either working or actively looking for work is the lowest since 1976. If it were the same as before the recession, the unemployment rate would be 7.3 percent, instead of 5.3 percent. Periods of unemployment, moreover, reduce workers' retirement benefits and rob the Social Security Trust Funds of revenues.

Enactment of pending legislation would come close to completing the Social Security edifice.

The Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment & Training Act, introduced by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) commits the U.S. to full employment, the assurance of useful work at a living wage for all. Paid for by a small tax on financial transactions, HR 1000 would create millions of new jobs in construction, infrastructure repair, energy and conservation, education, health care, human services, and neighborhood renovation. Such jobs could be targeted to neighborhoods like West Baltimore, where most adults are jobless.

Other pending legislation like Rep. Marcy Kaptur's (D-OH) 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps would create jobs and give the public a taste of how government job creation could preserve the nation's resources.

Let's observe Social Security's 80th birthday by taking steps toward employment assurance -- what its planners considered the keystone of economic security. Let's make their support of employment assurance a test of whether candidates for federal office in 2016 deserve our votes.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Fast food workers, healthcare workers and their supporters shout slogans
at a rally and march to demand an increase of the minimum wage
in Los Angeles, Calif. on Dec. 4, 2014. Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty

"…Where, after all, do universal rights begin? In small places, close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he or she lives in; the school or college he or she attends; the factory, the farm or office where he or she works.

Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, and equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world…"

--Eleanor Roosevelt (1968) commenting on the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

:"...It is the purpose of the Humphrey Hawkins 21st Century Full
Employment and Training Act (HR 1000) to expedite progress to fulfill the right
to useful work at living wages for all persons seeking employment, as promptly
as possible and at the earliest practicable date by establishing a Full
Employment Trust Fund to fund and
operate a national program of public service employment and to provide additional
labor market opportunities to complement those offered by the existing private,
public, and nonprofit sectors." -- HR 1000 (Full Text), introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) with 57 co-sponsors

December 10 is International Human Rights Day and the anniversary of the day that the Universal Declaration was adopted in 1948. This year’s slogan, Human Rights 365, encompasses the idea that every day is
Human Rights Day. It celebrates the fundamental proposition in the Universal
Declaration that each one of us, everywhere, at all times is entitled to the
full range of human rights, that human rights belong equally to each of us and
bind us together as a global community with the same ideals and values.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Join us
for a strategy briefing to help build a national movement for
full employment.

REACHING

FULL

EMPLOYMENT

In
Conjunction With:

The
Congressional Full Employment Caucus

Wednesday,
July 9, 2014

10:00am-12:30pm*

2226
Rayburn HOB

*This meeting
will kick off two days of dialogue among national and
grassroots jobs creation advocates, for the purpose of
developing a coordinated national strategy. An afternoon
session, the same day, will address activity moving the
coalition forward---participation would be welcomed and
appreciated!

The
National Jobs for All Coalition is dedicated to the
propositions that meaningful employment is a precondition
for a fulfilling life and that every person capable of
working should have the right to a job.The Coalition not only fights to make these propositions
facts of life, but it publishes invaluable research by noted
scholars to support them.

Jobs for All
Strategy Briefing

Representative
John Conyers, Jr. (MI)

Representative
Frederica Wilson (FL)

Representative
Marcy Kaptur (OH)

Representative
Barbara Lee (CA)

Rev. Rodney S.
Sadler, Jr., Ph.D.

Moral Monday

Associate
Professor of Bible

Union Presbyterian Seminary

Debby Szeredy

Executive Vice
President, American Postal Workers Union

Kevin Bradshaw

President, Bakery,
Confectionery, Tobacco, Workers

& Grain
Millers Union Local 252G

Kellogg's Workers
in Memphis, TN have
been off the job since October 2013.

George H.
Lambert, Jr.

President and CEO
of the Greater Washington Urban League,

Philip Harvey

Professor of Law
& Economics

Rutgers School of
Law

Executive
Committee, National Jobs for All Coalition

Josh Nassar

Legislative
Director, United Auto Workers

Chris Horton

Worcester
Unemployment Action Group (MA)

Voices of
Unemployed Workers

Deborah
Weinstein

Executive
Director, Coalition on Human Needs

Gertrude
Schaffner Goldberg

Chair,
National Jobs for All Coalition

Professor Emerita
of Social Policy, Adelphi University

Jessica
Schieder

Policy Associate,
Center for Effective Government

Lunch with
Witness Wednesdays, the critical
effort to renew extended unemployment benefits, will be at the
Triangle on the Capitol Hill lawn.

Witness Wednesdays for July 9 will
be hosted by Representative Barbara Lee (CA)
and will feature the stories of unemployed African Americans,
Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans.

Strategy Session
A, July 9, 2014

2226 Rayburn House
Office Building

2:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Chuck Bell , Facilitator

National
Jobs for All Coalition

Robert Creamer

Democracy Partners

Miriam Pemberton

Institute
for Policy Studies

Bill Barclay

Chicago Political
Economy Group

Andrea Miller

Progressive
Democrats of America

Local Reports

Kae Halonen

South East
Michigan Jobs with Justice

Sheena Foster

Worker's
Interfaith Network, Memphis, TN

Rev. Glencie
Rhedrick

Mecklenburg
Ministries, NC

Clinton
Smith

Gray
Panthers, Austin, TX

Joel
Segal

Progressive
Democrats of America, VA

Former Senior
Legislative Assistant, Representative John Conyers, Jr.

Leonard Mell

National Jobs for
All Coalition, VA

Larry Bresler

Organize
Ohio

More,
TBA

__________________________________________________________________

Thursday
Morning Panel, July 10, 2014

10:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

2226 Rayburn House
Office Building

Logan Martinez, Facilitator

Miami Valley Full
Employment Council and National Jobs for All
Coalition

Frank
Peterson

Unemployed Veteran

Other panelists, TBA

Thursday afternoon
we will be meeting members of the US Congress regarding job
creation legislation

Full Employment Now!

How Did Congress Vote on Jobs Issues?

Other Priority Federal Job Creation Legislation

In addition to HR 1000, there are several other very important job creation bills pending in Congress. Some of these bills may be reintroduced in the next legislative session. The Put America to Work Campaign thanks the sponsors of these bills for their vision and leadership.

HR 1617 – Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and 19 cosponsors have introduced HR 1617, which would create over 2 million jobs over two years. These jobs would include public service jobs to implement energy audit programs and retrofits, improve public parks, renovate schools and housing, and expand childcare and early education .HR 1617 would cost $227 billion over two years and is fully paid for through separate legislation that creates higher tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires, eliminates subsidies for Big Oil, and closes loopholes for corporations that ship American jobs overseas.

HR 2553 – National Infrastructure Bank Act

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has introduced the National Infrastructure Bank Act, with 103 cosponsors. The bill would create and fund a public bank to leverage private and public capital to support infrastructure projects of national and regional significance, including transportation, environment, energy, telecommunications and water projects.The bank would have a major emphasis in fundingenvironmental infrastructure projects such as enhancing clean water; energy and electric infrastructure projects, and is supported by the Blue-Green Alliance, the United Steelworkers and Utility Workers of America.

HR 188 -- The 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps Act

Rep. Marcy Kaptur and 2 cosponsors have introduced HR 188, which would establish a Civilian Conservation Corps to employ unemployed or underemployed U.S. citizens in the construction, maintenance, and carrying on of works of a public nature, such as forestation of U.S. and state lands, prevention of forest fires, floods, and soil erosion, and construction and repair of National Park System paths and trails. The bill would be funded at a level of $16 billion a year from fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2017.

You can help!! Support these bills and urge others to do so.Pass a resolution supporting these bills in your union, Labor Council, community organization or city council. Visit www.PutAmericaToWork.net for more information about the bills, related federal legislation, and sample resolutions.

Like us on Facebook!

HR 1000: The Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act

HR 1000, a revised version of HR 870 and HR 4277 introduced in previous sessions of Congress, was reintroduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) on March 6, 2013. This transformative federal legislation would create a national public service jobs program to complement job creation efforts in the private and nonprofit sectors. Most notably, the bill "aims to provide a job to any American that seeks work, and to ultimately, create a full employment society."

HR 1000 creates a national "Full Employment and Training Trust Fund," funded by a small Financial Transactions Tax on stock, bond and derivatives transactions. This would create a major new national funding source large enough to create 2.5 to 4 million jobs in the first two years of the program. The bill would also provide much additional funding to support innovative job training programs, such as one-stop career centers, YouthBuild and Job Corps, among others.

Organizing Resources

Put America to Work!!

The Put America to Work Campaign seeks to organize a strong national social movement to guarantee a right to a living wage job for every person who wants one.

As part of our work, we strongly support the Humphrey Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act (HR 870), which aims to create millions of jobs for unemployed workers and move the US towards a full employment society.

The bill establishes a National Full Employment Trust Fund to fund an innovative direct job creation program. The Trust Fund will pay for new jobs on Main Street by raising new revenue through a small, targeted tax on Wall Street stock, options, futures, swaps and credit default swap transactions.

This campaign is a project of the National Jobs For All Coalition, which is working to build a new movement for full employment at liveable wages. For more info, visit: www.NJFAC.org

About the Campaign

The Put America to Work Campaign is a national grassroots citizens' campaign to pass comprehensive federal job creation legislation, achieve full employment and secure the right to a living wage job for every person in the U.S. who wants one.

Our current strategic focus to build national support for HR 1000, the Humphrey Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act, introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). To mobilize support for the bill, we will be conducting a national program of community forums and teach-ins to educate policymakers and citizens about the jobs crisis and the need for massive public investment to improve our infrastructure, human services and social safety net.

We seek to put a human face on unemployment, underemployment, financial insecurity and economic distress. Our goal is to build a powerful national social movement that harnesses the voices of ordinary Americans and community organizations to permanently improve the economic rights for people who live in this country, including the right to a job, the right to a decent education, the right to health care and the right to income and retirement security.

In taking on this challenge, we want to create a more compassionate and solidaristic economy, where the public interest and the common welfare are valued, and people from all walks of life join together to reduce and eliminate poverty and chronic unemployment. Whether we have a good job or we are unemployed, we have a huge stake in each other's well-being. The problems of unemployment, poor wages and poverty are not just the problems of the unemployed and the poor -- they are the problems of all of us. We have all seen corporations abruptly eliminate and shed jobs of highly-paid workers when it suits them to do so. The economic security of workers-at-large will be greatly improved by ensuring that everyone who wants to work has the right and opportunity to do so.

To that end, we seek to inspire a much high level of public awareness and civic engagement about solving the serious, long-standing and chronic problems of unemployment, underemployment and poverty in the U.S. Even in relatively good times, tens of millions of Americans have continued to suffer with inadequate job opportunities and low wages. The fight for full employment and economic justice must go to the top of the national agenda, and stay there until all Americans have the economic right to a decent job and livelihood.

The Put America to Work Campaign is a project of the National Jobs for All Coalition, a national organization based in New York that advocates for full employment and living wage jobs for all. Contributions to NJFAC are tax-deductible and we welcome financial and volunteer contributions in support of the campaign. To join the campaign and endorse HR 1000, or request more information, please fill out our contact form.